It started with some old records. Keith got his guitar for christmas '96. I got mine the next year. A lefty Strat thank god I found you. Post grunge cover songs, Metallica solos I couldn't play yet. Green day and power chords. Punk rock discovered I died my hair blue and fell in love with Joe S. High school hall shows sloppy kisses writing songs about things I didn't understand drunk weekends skipping class to smoke weed and have panic attacks my first girlfriend 4 months it lasted. Hey you wanna start a band? Fox n Hounds half cut best friends shitfaced always Stars Queen Alex Riverdale it was so much fun for a while...these things happen...endless nightdays in my basement with new york pizza alberta premium heartbreaker in the aeroplane over the sea yankee hotel foxtrot clarity is this it london calling harvest...

In some empty chinese 3am in San Francisco we can talk about it here safer than a car in a thunderstorm...strange conversations like 'how could drowning ever be peaceful' you're running out of breath shaking and squirming now you're lungs are wet...

It was time to go home. Looking out the window over that expanse of stubborn snow covered prairie. It felt so good to sing and to play loud. One way to live. There are so many others. All the lunatics and artists, sexual deviants and strange menchildren with smeared lipstick on their teeth fleeing to the coasts. I can almost feel New York. I close my eyes and you're still there, you're always there.

There was a night in Sydney. A night in Juarez. Too many nights in L.A. A night in Roanoke...you've never been there...don't go.

Me and Keith would listen to the 'Blue album' by Collective Soul and learn the riffs by ear...we played cover sets in the junior high gymnasium to 500 kids, the vocals piped in through the intercom P.A, interrupted several times by a page from the office. It was terrible and incredible concurrently. We recorded a cover of 'Enter Sandman' on a boom box and because we couldn't play the guitar solo (yet) we spliced it in from the Black Album and then resumed the song played by us as if nothing had changed...it was completely ridiculous. And so is rock n roll.

There's something I tell myself quite often: Don't take yourself too seriously. There's beauty in it, and there's something to be learned from it...but there's more to this place than that. I've seen too many people start believing in things that aren't real and the next thing you know you're in the fucking Tea Party.

In some shitty suburb somewhere on this planet is a kid who is playing guitar on his bed and singing words so beautiful it makes you want to throw everything you've done away. And we will never compare. So be thankful you're never gonna hear it.

Long live rock n roll. Just don't let it destroy you.

Rick.